Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884 – January 24, 1920) was an Jewish Italian painter and sculptor. Modigliani was born in Livorno, Tuscany and began his artistic studies in Italy before moving to Paris in 1906 where he began to create his unique style, influenced by the artists in his circle of friends, primitive art, but standing apart from them stylistically. Sick most of his life, he partook of alcohol and drugs, and was a philanderer; he died at the age of 35.

Jeanne Hébuterne

The following summer, the Russian sculptor Chana Orloff introduced him to a beautiful 18-year-old art student named Jeanne Hébuterne who had posed for Foujita. From a conservative bourgeois background, Hébuterne was renounced by her devout Roman Catholic family for her liaison with the painter whom they saw as little more than a debauched derelict and, worse yet, a Jew. Despite her family, soon they were living together and although Hébuterne was the love of his life, their public scenes became more renown than Modigliani's individual drunken exhibitions.

Related Topics:
Russia - Chana Orloff - Jeanne Hébuterne - Foujita - Bourgeois - Roman Catholic

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On December 3, 1917, Modigliani's first one-man exhibition opened at the Berthe Weill Gallery. The chief of the Paris police was scandalized by Modigliani's nudes and forced him to close the exhibition within a few hours after its opening.

Related Topics:
December 3 - 1917 - Exhibition - Police

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That same year, Modigliani received a letter from former lover Simone Thirioux, a French-Canadian woman, who informed him that she had given birth to his son. Modigliani never acknowledged paternity of the child.

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After moving to Nice with Hébuterne she became pregnant and on November 29, 1918 gave birth to a daughter who they named Jeanne.

Related Topics:
Nice - November 29 - 1918

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